


Second Verse, Same As The First

by ryfkah



Category: Monster (Manga/Anime), Princess Tutu
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:11:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things these idealistic, self-sacrificing types never seem to understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Verse, Same As The First

“Oh, for god’s sake, Fakir,” Autor sighs. “He’s a med student, not an undergraduate. He’s attractive, he’s of legal age, I don’t know what you have to angst over.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fakir snaps, without looking up from notebook. He’s working on a new children’s story: a young prince given as a hostage to a war-torn faraway land. The prince will have to escape somehow, unless of course the moral is that he can be happier helping the people who need him in the war-torn land than he will be if he returns home to his peaceful life. Fakir hasn’t decided yet. “Actually, I don’t know why you’re even here. Why _are_ you here?”

“Because you had Rudy Gillen for your intro to psychoanalytic literary criticism class last semester, and now I have him for the master class and I need to pick your brains. But your brains are _clearly_ filled with Kenzo Tenma, so I don’t know why I even bother. Why do you even teach psychoanalytic literary criticism? You’re terrible at it. You should just let me teach both classes.”

“I’m not terrible at it,” Fakir mutters. “I just don’t like people using my stories as examples.”

“Well, then you’re a hypocrite. It’s not like your stories are very good examples anyway. Really, Fakir, it’s literary analysis for kindergarteners. A handsome prince and a swan, _please_ –”

Fakir tunes out Autor with relative ease, now that he’s not talking about Kenzo Tenma – it’s a skill he’s had decades to practice – and taps his quill on the page, frowning. (He still writes with a quill, though everyone else in the department has long since switched over to typewriters. Students invariably think the bright yellow feather is a sign of hidden depths of frivolity, and are inevitably disappointed.) If his prince character perhaps meets a girl in the kingdom – no, too easy, and he doesn’t want to write a love story anyway. Maybe instead he'll introduce children –

“What’s _that_?” Autor’s sharp, nervously excited voice cuts through his reverie again, and Fakir scowls.

“If you’re just going to –” Fakir begins, but Autor cuts him off.

“Well, all right,” he says, shaking his head, and then turns to flash Fakir one of those smug, I-know-everything-you’re-dying-to-know smiles that he never really grew out of. (They serve him fairly well, actually, as a professor.) “I can certainly see why he’s _your_ type.”

“What?” Fakir leverages himself out of his seat, at approximately a third of the speed at which he would have been able to launch himself before his knees started going stiff after long periods, and heads for the window of his faculty bungalow. Outside, he can see young Kenzo Tenma, sitting on the ground and carefully cradling a small skinny dog, as spectators start to filter around. His leg is torn and bloody; so is the dog’s muzzle. Someone is bending solicitously over him, and pointing towards the hospital.

For a moment, Fakir just stands clutching the window, gritting his teeth. He is restraining a desire, or a memory of a desire, an urge to march out there and grab the young man by the shoulder, to shake him and demand: _Why do you do such pointless things? What possible good could it do you?_

Instead, he turns around, in a short gesture, and goes back to his desk. “Autor,” he says, aware that his voice is harsh, “I really have to work.”

Autor rolls his eyes underneath his glasses and heads out the door, still carrying the file with Rudy Gillen’s notes under his arm. Fakir doesn’t notice. He picks up his pen, pauses again, and starts to write.

Children - is that what he was thinking? Threatened children – dangerous children? Perhaps the prince stops to help them, at risk of danger to himself, but something goes wrong . . . there are consequences to kind acts. Maybe that will be the moral of this story. It’s a moral worth reiterating, after all; it’s a thing that princes never seem to understand.


End file.
